Hi everyone! I decided I just had to join this.

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(Before I start: good grief, I just typed up the lengthiest and most descriptive introduction post in the history of my life, and I got an error!)

I decided to join this forum just a few minutes ago, after realizing I had a very strong need to become part of a group of people that I feel are more like me than most people in my real life. A year ago my (now ex-) boyfriend and I got back together after a short break, only if - as he said - I decided to see a therapist. I have been in and out of therapists' offices for quite a large part of my life, and after many misdiagnoses (ADD being the most common one) I had kind of given up on therapy completely.

The very kind therapist I started seeing needed a mere two sessions to propose Asperger's to me, and while I first laughed her straight in the face for a good ten minutes, I did realize that it had been with me all along. She set me up with a five-headed team of specialists to diagnose me, all I needed to do was pick up the phone and call them to schedule a sessions. Which I couldn't, and still can't. Last week we decided to not have me diagnosed. I have weighed the pros and cons that come with this decision for months, and I feel that I the only problem I had was not knowing who I am. And though I'm still learning, I know that I can work this out, and learn to live with the tag 'Probably Asperger's'.

Currently, I am a 22-year-old linguistics and literary history student at one of the largest and most Ivy League-like universities in my country (The Netherlands), and I maintain a strict 4.0 GPA. At first, this surprised me, because I have always been known as a quitter and a failure for not accomplishing things (over here we work with a leveled education, and in high school I started at the top, worked my way down to the lowest level, and had to climb all the way back up to where I am now). I am quite proud of what I've accomplished so far, and - more importantly - I'm very glad I've found my crowd of people at the university, in terms of intellect as well as intelligence.

Despite my general happy spirits there are some complications that I have lived with all my life, but that I could never point out until now. The first and foremost being that I never feel that there is someone who relates to me or who understands me. I've come to learn that I seemingly have a way of thinking and processing information that differs quite strongly from others around me. People tell me I go from A to F while they simply tag along to the regular alphabet in terms of conversational steps. It's great with academics, but not so much in social engagements.
Second, and this is rather strongly related to the above, I seem to have developed a mask that displays such strong social skills that people tell me I am one of the most social people they've ever met, while I hardly know what they really mean when I look them in the eyes. This way I think people see me as a 'fully grown' social being, and they approach me with personal problems and ask for various types of advice. I don't particularly like giving dating advice or so to say 'random' advise of some other sort, and I know I don't HAVE to do it, but I can't get myself to step away from it. In the light of that I am frequently stuck at birthday or parties where people talk chit chat for most of the evening, and I am bored and mind drifting.
Last, I become very stressed when changes in circumstances occur. I can schedule my own life well enough, but others don't keep as strict a schedule as I do. It often happens that my friends - who were supposed to show up at 8 pm - show up at 8.25 pm, and I always feel that it ruins my schedule and, frankly, my night. I can never let people sleep over, or sleep at someone else's place (no matter how long ago it was scheduled) because I break down for three days afterwards. There are many of these small occasions when I just shut down like that.

What I hope to find on this forum is conversations and discussions that perhaps that fit with me better than most in real life. I would love to correspond with anyone (in particular people in college or university who are trying to manage getting by with academic, social and other types of commitment), and talk about things that matter to us. I'd also love to share experiences of all sorts with you guys.

Hope to talk to you all soon!

With love,

Neves

P.S.: I am sorry about this, once again, lengthy post, and if you got all the way down here, thank you!
P.P.S.: Also, I'm sorry for not using my real name on these discussion board, but (and I really really don't mean to brag), I have a highly uncommon name and I well read blog in my country (with a domain that is literally my name dot something), and I don't want to share these stories with anybody who googles my name, just you and me.

Welcome to WrongPlanet.

Hello, Neves - and welcome to WrongPlanet. Look forward to hearing more from you in the future.


M.

Welcome to wrong planet we are glad to have you here

Hi Neves,

I am a Dutch woman too. The search for the self, who am I? Where am I? Who have I? When you see similarities with people on this site, you can make up your mind as who you or what you are. You don't need 5 strangers who look the symptoms up in the DMS V to tell you this. That list is rubbish anyway, to keep the pharmaceutical companies afloot.

O boy, this is really good! I didn't think I'd find anybody here from the Netherlands (silly me), but here we are. Have you ever contemplated being diagnosed?

To WrongPlanet!! !

Your post was not that lengthy and I found it very interesting. Thank you for joining.

Welcome to this place we call wrong planet... wow pretty long post. But it still isn't as long as mine was so don't feel like your boring people because I myself usually find almost everything people say on here to be most interesting so reading long columns isn't tedious.

Welcome to WP!

Hello Neves!

I found your story really interesting. I am also a student, I study sociology and want to add cultural anthropology and psychology.

You said "I never feel that there is someone who relates to me or who understands me": it was absolutely the same with me. An all my life I have been wandering why. It´s nice that there is a place where a person can meet people with similar experience.

Actually, I have had some similar experiences with therapists too. I have been misdiagnosed several times. Once a therapist diagnosed me with schizoid personality disorder - I didn´t show much emotion and therapist thought that I don´t have any. And that´s not true. I actually have very deep emotions but I also have problems expressing them in an appropriate way. Then I moved to another city and found another therapist and after a while he said that I have Asperger´s. For me it was a relief to find that out why I don´t fit in society and perceive things differently than others.

And by the way, Netherlands have always seemed like a nice country to me. Really. I would definitely like to visit it one day.

Welcome to WrongPlanet!

Hi there! Wow, I cannot believe you've been misdiagnosed with Schizoid! Can you even believe that? I feel that, at least in this country, there are quite a few things that could use some changes. Take, for example, (and I know you really can't change this) the way people are diagnosed, what psychiatrists look for, their specialization. I think the gap between what the people know and what therapists know is quite large. I was really lucky that my therapist friend forwarded me to a random practice she thought was good, and it ended up being one that specialized in the autistic spectrum. Also, the amount of expertise in elementary school. That goes beyond everything I stand for. My cousin's in college to become an ES teacher, and she once read an 80-page book on PDD-NOS and considers herself a true expert. She even told me I probably don't have Asperger's.

Sociology seems like a really fun programme! What are you focusing on, and what year are you in? I'm considering taking on half a psychology bachelor, focusing on linguistics in psychology, or a full bachelor in theology.

And as far as the Netherlands go. It's a great country. It's completely different from the USA, but some here seem to think that's it's a smaller version. But it's good. Great cultural and political history!

Hi Neves!

Actually, I have read in a book on autism that it´s pretty common that adults with AS are misdiagnosed as having personality disorder. That makes me sad. How is the therapy supposed to help you when you are treated as having personality disorder while you have AS? I was living in Slovakia when I was diagnosed as schizoid and not many people there have ever heard the term "Asperger syndrome". When you say "autism" they imagine "Rain Man" or severely autistic children with extremely low IQ who don´t talk at all. They don´t know it´s a spectrum and that you can have Asperger´s even if your are not mentally ret*d and seem "normal" to them. And, as you said, they consider themselves experts even if they haven´t study psychology or haven´t read a single valid book on autism or AS. The situation is a bit better here in Czech Republic, but still far from being perfect.

I am in my first year in sociology and before that I was doing media studies in Slovakia. Sociology is very interesting, but I have hard time getting used to new school. I dislike changes very much and lot of things change when you start new school. What I am most interested in is individualization, modernization, cultural narcissism and such stuff - like what Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck or Christopher Lasch write. It´s what I have been thinking and writing about in my last school. I also love movies, so I was thinking of something like sociology or socio-anthropology of film. But now I have been in a depressed mood lately, so I am not doing much into that. How about your school? What year are you at? What are you thinking about in your fields of study?

I will definitely go to Netherlands as soon as I won´t be so preoccupied with changes

Hello neves, welcome, from another Dutchie

Enjoy your stay on the Wrong Planet!

It sort of freaks me out, the whole misdiagnosis thing. I'm glad I know more now!

I'm currently in my first year, and I'm starting to slowly realize that my field of work will mostly involve the literary historical period 1300-1880. I am fascinated by religion in texts, literature in general, the history of grammar, and dialects.